Nintendo’s new user agreement includes power to brick your Switch

Nintendo is well known for its harsh stance on emulators. Last year, it shut down the open-source Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx, and another Switch emulator called Yuzu. Now, its latest user agreement is taking an even firmer stance on the issue to further crackdown on emulation.

If you have a

Nintendo account
in the US, you may have noticed an email in your inbox recently with the subject line “Updates to Nintendo Account User Agreement and Nintendo Privacy Policy.”

In this email, you can find Nintendo’s new user agreement, and if you look very closely at the fine print, you’ll find that Nintendo has made some significant changes to it, notably the potential punishment of making your “Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part” (via Game File).

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Nintendo could brick your Switch if you break the user agreement

Nintendo has updated its Privacy Policy as well

Pocket-lint / Nintendo

Nintendo’s old user agreement was quite short and straightforward regarding tampering with its work. Up until May 6, players agreed under section two of the user agreement that: “you are not allowed to lease, rent, sublicense, publish, copy, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble all or any portion of the Nintendo Account Services without Nintendo’s written consent, or unless otherwise expressly permitted by applicable law.”

However, Nintendo’s updated user agreement has significantly lengthened section two, adding that users cannot “distribute, offer for sale, or create derivative works of any portion of the Nintendo Account Services” or “modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services.”

By incorporating even stricter language into its US user agreement, it’s clear that Nintendo is adopting a much tougher stance on individuals who modify their consoles or run emulators.

Another added line has also caught many people’s attention: “You acknowledge that if you fail to comply with the foregoing restrictions Nintendo may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”

Nintendo doesn’t explicitly state what it means by making your device “unusable.” However, there’s a strong chance this is merely Nintendo’s polite way of indicating that if a user breaches its user agreement policy, their Switch console could potentially be bricked (rendered inoperable) by Nintendo.

In anticipation of the launch of the Switch 2, Nintendo has also updated its privacy policy in light of its new Gamechat feature coming to the console. Nintendo states that it “may collect, monitor and record audio and video of your chat sessions with other users to provide a safe and secure environment for certain of our services.”

You can check out Nintendo’s updated User Agreement and Privacy Policy in the US in full on its official website. If you’re excited about the Switch 2, don’t forget to check out Pocket-lint’s

hands-on impressions
of the console at Nintendo’s Switch 2 Experience event.

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